Introducing the NYTBEWU-3000

The Comics Curmudgeon occasionally
refers to the Archie strip as being written
by the "Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000" (aka the
AJGLU-3000). The point being that only a machine completely
divorced from human experience could generate
a comic strip so devoid of actual humorous content.

Somewhat less well known is the box invented by the same
folks, the
NYTBEWU-3000: the New York Times Boilerplate
Editorial-Writing Unit 3000. And what better time to
deploy it than on Christmas weekend, when all the hu-mans
have better things to do than to try to come up with a Fresh
Take on a Pressing Problem.

Starved for revenue and accustomed to decades of overspending, many
states have been overwhelmed. They are facing shortfalls of $140 billion
next year. Even before the downturn, states jeopardized their futures by
accumulating trillions in debt that they swept into some far-off future.

Just as Isaac Asimov's fictional robots had their immutable Three
Laws of Robotics, so does the
NYTBEWU-3000 have its own overriding directives. And one is:
"The NYTBEWU-3000 shall never simply advocate spending
restraint by government." This rule applies even if the Unit
has just described serious problems due to irresponsible
overspending. This is one of the ways you can detect the artificiality
of the intelligence involved. Any human would recognize the
disconnect here, and at least attempt to
cover it up, but the NYTBEWU-3000 just barrels along:

But if states act quickly to deal with their revenue losses and address
their debt — and receive sufficient
aid from Washington — there
is still time to avoid a crisis.

Note how the NYTBEWU-3000 is programmed to (clumsily)
turn an overspending
problem into a "revenue loss" problem.

But more important is that "sufficient aid" bit. Simply calling
it "money" is counterproductively honest, so the NYTBEWU-3000
is coded to euphemize it to "aid" instead. Similarly the real
source of the money (that would be "federal taxpayers") is obfuscated
to "Washington". Which (of course) is assumed to be sitting
on magical infinite piles of it.

Again, an actual human might foresee the obvious objection ("Wait a
minute. This effectively means that taxpayers residing in fiscally
responsible states
would bailing out taxpayers in profligate states, right?") and attempt
to deal with it. But the NYTBEWU-3000 isn't that smart.

Another telltale:

The nation's richest taxpayers just got a windfall in the federal
tax deal extorted from President Obama by Republican senators. States
should not shy away from asking for more help from those most able to
pay.

Which demonstrates another couple of directives the NYTBEWU-3000 must
obey:

In editorials dealing with fiscal
policy, the NYTBEWU-3000 shall always treat increasing taxes on 'the rich'
as the solution to any fiscal problem.

The NYTBEWU-3000 shall always refer to forcing
people to pay more taxes as "asking for more help" from them.

I look forward to the day when people go to New York Times
editorials for insightful analysis about as often as they check
out Archie
for a hearty laugh.

Suggested supplementary reading, written by non-artificial
intelligences: George Will:

Oliver Twist did not choose his fate. California, New York and Illinois
- three states whose conditions are especially parlous - did. And in
November, each of these deep-blue states elected Democratic governors
beholden to public employee unions.

And Steven
Marlenga, who details the fiscal tomfoolery by which desperate
state governments have tried to avoid painful budgetary choices.

The Girl Who Played With Fire

This is (in case you've been cut off from civilization
for a few years)
the movie version of the sequel to The Girl With the Dragon
Tattoo. Some sequels stand on their own, but you'll really
want to have (at least) seen the previous movie in order to
understand what's going on here.

The titular Girl, Lisbeth Salander, is basking in the sunny Caribbean
when warning cyberbells go off: one of the villains from the
previous movie is behaving badly. So it's back to dreary Sweden for
her. Meanwhile, her co-hero from the previous book, crusading
journalist Mikael Blomkvist, is managing an exposé of the
Swedish sex-exploitation trade in which the kinks and
perversions of numerous Swedish
bigwigs in business and government are to be revealed.

Almost immediately, a number of people involved are murdered, and
Lisbeth is framed. Both she and Mikael work independently
to find the true
culprits. Along the way, revelations are made about Lisbeth's past
history.

It's not for the kids. (MPAA: "brutal violence including a rape, some
strong sexual content, nudity and language.") And—hope you won't
consider this a spoiler—the ending
is pretty much a cliffhanger for the next installment.

Without Fail

This is number 6 in Lee Child's series of novels about Jack Reacher.
(Number 15 was published a few months back. Will I catch up?)
Here, Reacher gets pretty close to an actual job, different from the
ad hoc episodes of thwarting evildoers seen in previous books.

It's set after Election Day in a year divisible by four. The Vice
President-elect has been receiving credible assassination threats.
The female Secret Service agent in charge of protecting him, M. E.
Froelich,
is at her wits end—has she missed anything?
Froelich used to be the sweetie of Reacher's late brother Joe, and is vaguely
aware of Reacher's talents. So she tracks him down, and asks him
to attempt to penetrate the Secret Service's protections.

And, of course, Reacher does. More than once.

Naturally, the logical thing is for Reacher (and another ex-Army
sidekick, Frances Neagley) to "consult" with the Secret Service
in order to counter the actual would-be assassins. It's tough, because
the bad guys are ruthless and clever. (They also want to strike
fear into the heart of the VP-E, so there are multiple
warnings
delivered, variously gruesome and mysterious.) And there are
complications due to Froelich's past relationship with Joe.

As in previous books, Reacher is both a man of action and a decent
detective. And Child's prose goes down like water. Although he
is (surprisingly) a Brit, he clearly loves describing American
scenery, from Atlantic City, to D. C., to remote North Dakota.

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